Why wasn't it released in the US sooner? (contains many spoilers)

Rating: 8/10 (7 July 2003)

I'm impressed. It just might have to do with the fact that I walked into this film expecting a mediocre horror flick. But I ended up walking out concluding, pretty damn good film.
In the first couple minutes of 28 days later, you see a lab, you see cages, you see monkeys locked up in these small cages. It's just human nature, just like how Adam and Eve were given the right to name the plants and animals of Eden, to automatically name and categorize this film. I started thinking, "ahh, okay, Outbreak, oh but it's supposed to be a horror flick, so maybe a bit more kooky, so actually 12 monkeys." Then you see rage. Rage is pretty much the underlying foundation of the film, the reason for the story. Rage is a frightening disease/virus initially transferred from beast to human in this lab when three animal rights activists stupidly trying to be liberal and leftist free an infected monkey, even after numerous desparate pleas from the scientist trying to convince them that freeing it will cause the end of the world. Of course, they free the monkey and it attacks the only female, and you see the effects. It takes no more than 20 seconds for the human to transform into a red-eyed, twitchingly spastic monster void of any past, identity, or thought that has one goal: attack and make others like me.
And as you can imagine, since it takes only 20 seconds for rage to fully take its course, the spread of this disease is monumentally quick -- thus the title 28 days later which is pretty much how long it took to destroy the world, or western Europe, same thing. You do not see the pandemonium that ensues of evacuations or mass exodus, though.
You, are then, introduced to Jim, played by Cillian Murphy. The oddly optimistic and lucky hero who, after waking up from a coma (you don't know how long) and discovering his London to be completely deserted and in disarray, runs into a church full of rage infested humans. (They sleep in churches, you know. They love the pews.) I would have to say that this scene, from when Jim wakes up, up til when he discovers rage, is probably one of the best scenes in the film. The silence is deafening. You wonder, is this a set? Is London really empty now? It's beautiful. You see the streets, in the afternoon, eerily peaceful and void of life. He walks trying to gather information on why things are the way they are and why it is that he's utterly alone.
You realize that the storytelling of this is a bit more sophisticated than your mediocre horror film. Granted, it is set up in a way where you have to be figure out along with Jim what actually happened, and besides the blatant newspaper headlines reading "EVACUATION," you see the effects of what rage might do to a once teeming city of human life.
What I loved is the preparation that the survivors have undertaken to try to live. The survivors that understand the disease fight it. And it's not like "I know what you did last summer" where girls with big boobs in wet white tank tops scream "f*** yous" into the night, they actually have knives, fire power, bombs, riot gear and know that when they run, they have to seriously book and get to a proven secure place. This is more realistic. You know that normal people's hysteria cause them to go out and make the supermarket run out of their second stocks of bottled water and spam when they hear even a slight warning of hurricane from a local weather forecaster. Then in an apocalypse situation, why the hell wouldn't people just go all out and do anything they can to survive and protect themselves. I liked this.

You see stronger traces of Danny Boyle's direction, besides his artistic shots of empty London, in Jim's surreal dream of his parents where, present-day Jim seems to be watching, but at the same time part of a home video-slash-memory of his parents unpacking the groceries in the kitchen and asking about his day. Oh, and the chase up the stairs scene: very Hitchcock and Vertigo-ish. I likey.
Another great aspect in the movie is that mere survival and lusty romance are NOT the only things moving the plotline, if at all. Okay, I'm becoming stuck comparing this to regular horror movies, I'm sorry. But it's hard not to, and realize why this really tops out, because it is, even standing against non-horror films, just a well-done movie. But instead, it is the realization that survival is not the only reason for the movie, or for life after rage.
As cheesy as it sounds, glimmers of hope and truer connections become anchoring parts of the movie that not only drive the characters but end up also resolving things. In the horrors of death (survivors killing ragers, remember ragers don't kill, they convert), blood and hanging on to sanity by your mere fingernails, the now surrogate family made up of Jim, Selena (a tough sexy chemist that can kill a rager probably with her bare hands), Frank (resourceful, rightly protective father played very well by Brendan Gleeson who also played Walter 'Monk' McGinn in Gangs of New York), and Hannah (Frank's teenage daughter played by Megan Burns) stop by a deserted meadow where they can have a picnic and relax a little.

The open space provides easy warning to any intruding ragers, so you feel somewhat safe. Frank and Jim happen upon a family of horses running in the meadow. This scene stands out. Here, you see, the push for why these survivors have traveled this far, why they fight for their lives, why rage is such the antithesis of peace & love and thus, so devastating.
It has so many chances to exploit the "boo!" suspense aspect of things popping out here and there and causing you to jump, but it really doesn't all that much. You see how different camera shots represent different points of view - when a rager is running towards a character, the camera is shaking and running towards them as well. And it's more realistic. If a rager is so void of intelligence and is loud (they make ack noises and twitch like no other turrets victim), they could never really sneak up on you, right? You would probably see and hear them coming a mile away.
The film moves on to question organized, emergency governmental systems of survival by the 42nd brigade that the wary travelers have finally found in their long journey by a directional recording that they caught on the radio telling them that "salvation and the answer to infection" lies with them. Here you see how it is very much so like "Lord of the Flies" but all growns up. Military men, who are not too far away from mere boys playing cowboys and indians or piggy haters trying to steal the conch, set up a seemingly completely safe haven where ragers will never set foot, or if they try, they're blown to bits. However, like all Lord of the Fliesian governments, it falls apart. But here you see. You see the choice that the "family" has to make. They are safe here, they don't have to worry about fighting anymore, they can sleep in beds with clean sheets and take showers with hot water, but is the condescension, the sexism (and rape if they had stayed), the testosteroney immaturity better than fighting off ragers everyday on your own?
One scene I found a bit jarring, and maybe only because I am American, is the infected black man chained by the neck in their backyard that the brigade was keeping as a specimen of 'study.' It is a bit whiny and American Studies-ish of me to fleetingly wonder what racial messages of having a foaming at the mouth, thoughtless, fettered black man 28 days later... might be sending, and what the NAACP or Spike Lee would say after seeing that, but then I thought again and realized that rage has been an equal opportunity disease infecting any and everybody throughout the film.
All in all, I like this film more when I think about it more and more. Although my stomach and muscles were tense, and I'd probably rather not watch it too many times for that sake of my own scaredy-catedness, I think that the film is thought-provoking, but not pretentious, and the characters very well-developed.